The advent of Motion Picture Entertainment Group Level 3 (“MP3”) digital encoding for audio files has revolutionized the distribution of music by reducing the distribution costs to near zero. This, in turn, has encouraged artists to create new works and to make their works available in digital form. However, the MP3 media type has some disadvantages. For example, digital rights management capabilities are not built into the MP3 media type. As a result, some have sought to design new media types that facilitate digital rights management. Others have created new media types in an effort to improve the techniques used when converting analog sources, such as sound or light, into and/or from a digital format. Still others have created new media types that focus on reducing the amount of data that needs to be transmitted and/or stored to play the content with sufficient accuracy to please at least a majority of users, or for other, specific purposes. This has lead to an explosion of different media types in common use.
The rapid growth in digitally-available content has also spurred the creation of a variety of media players, including both dedicated, stand-alone devices such as, without limitation, the iPod line of personal music players distributed by Apple Computer, Inc. of Cupertino, Calif., the Zune distributed by Microsoft, Inc. of Redmond, Wash., and the Zen line of personal music players distributed by Creative Technology, Ltd. of Singapore, and software-based media players for use on portable computers. To facilitate the user's access to digital content, many media players can play content encoded using a variety of media types. By way of example, the Windows Media Player software distributed by Microsoft, Inc. of Redmond, Wash., can play content encoded using a variety of media types, including Windows Media Audio (“WMA”), Windows Media Video (“WMV”), Motion Picture Entertainment Group (“MPEG”), MP3, WAVE, and Musical Instrument Digital Interface (“MIDI”). Windows Media Player also allows users to add support for new and alternative media types by simply installing an appropriate Coder/Decoder (“CODEC”).
Although many media players can play content encoded in any of a variety of media types, certain media types are proprietary, and the right to display content encoded using that media type is frequently tightly controlled. By way of example, the encoding technique employed by Apple Computer Inc.'s Quicktime, and RealNetworks' RealVideo and RealAudio media types are generally proprietary. As a result, users are forced to use a proprietary media player, rather than their preferred media player, if they wish to play content created using such a proprietary media type. This can be a problem both for users attempting to access a variety of media files within their own personal library, and for users attempting to access media files from other libraries. By way of example, some users may share a playlist, or ordered list of content to be played, with other users, and the other users may not realize that their preferred media player will not be able to play all of the content in the playlist.
Some software-based media players permit users to create customized “skins”, or user interfaces, for that particular media player. Such skins allow users to more easily access the commands and controls they most frequently use or need.
In addition, each media player typically has its advantages and disadvantages when compared to the other media players available, and users tend to use the player with the features and user interface that is most convenient and/or comfortable for them. As a result, users tend to grow comfortable with a particular media player user interface, especially a customized user interface, and when they are forced to switch from a media player containing such a user interface to one that uses a different interface, such as happens when content is encoded with a proprietary media type, they can become frustrated.